There’s both intrigue and comedic relief in this week’s episode of Cutie Honey Universe and both are entertaining enough in their own right. Genet strikes once again, but this time her target isn’t Honey, but Nat-chan instead. The cute best friend gets some unexpected spotlight this time around and it was cool to watch that. Natsuki reminds me both of Wakaba-chan from Revolutionary Girl Utena and Naru from Sailor Moon, she’s the friend with a fierce possessiveness over Honey that also will become bait in this episode.

Genet invites Natsuki on a date and Honey, the ever-supportive friend, helps her pick out an outfit and so on. The suggestive interaction between Nat-chan and Genet was a bit uncomfortable to watch at times, but I pushed through. During the date, Genet offers to buy Natsuki new clothes and while Nat-chan tries the outfit on, Genet disappears and a Panther Claw monster attacks, freezing the people around the store.

While this happens, Honey is doing PCIS work following Panther Claw’s trail somewhere else before getting a call from Genet about Natsuki’s situation (not suspicious at all, Genet!). Honey rushes to save her friend just as the monster is about to attack Nat-chan and do her in, but fear not! The brave and gallant Naoko, the banchou of the Sukeban girl gang, shields her, saving Natsuko from the monster. Naoko and her six followers are quickly dealt with but then Honey arrives and defeats the monster. There weren’t many fight scenes in this episode and the ones that happened weren’t very note-worthy, unfortunately.

After all this, Genet comes back and acts really cold towards everyone, particularly Natsuki. In a following scene many characters from Honey’s school get white roses, just like one Genet gave Natsuki before and the ones Sister Jill uses on the monsters. I suppose this is a pretty big hint that Honey will have a couple enemies that might be close to her. The most important development though is that the sharp Nat-chan realizes now there’s something off about Genet. She’s suspicious and I would say that this realization may come as great help to Honey in the future if Natsuki remains an ally to her.

All that said, I will give up on covering this show now. I will keep watching because it’s entertaining, easy to watch and campy, but I feel like I don’t have very much to say about it because the narrative is too simple and the pace is slow in terms of dealing with the Genet-Sister Jill connection, so it feels like all I’ll mention will be the fights and how long can Genet keep this ‘mystery’ up. That’s not really what I had in mind when I signed up for this.